OLAFUR ELIASSON’S ICE WATCH

Across the Nordic world, artists and creative people from all areas are striving to explain and preserve our unique way of life.

On the international stage, artists like Olafur Eliasson create works celebrating our culture, our geography and our place in the world. But these works often highlight just how fragile this way of life can be.

Last year, Eliasson and the geologist Minik Rosing created ‘Ice Watch’. They collected twelve blocks of ice which had been sheared off the Greenland ice sheet near Nuuk. The blocks were shipped to Copenhagen last October and for three days they slowly melted in front of City Hall Square.

The project was designed to mark the publication of the UN’s Report on Climate Change. As the blocks slowly disappeared, the message could hardly have been clearer. But that message came with a demand to do something about it. As Eliasson and Rosing said at the time:

‘Let’s transform climate knowledge into climate action.’

Making the most of the resources we have here is part of this approach. Supporting those who care for the land and the food grown on it is part of this approach. It’s one broad vision in a thousand different directions.